Import Email Addresses

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Sam Fielder
Sam Fielder
Fifth Anniversary Boomerang 2024
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hey folks, looking for some guidance here. I'm new to my position as DB manager for RE and I'm trying to merge our emails from a 3rd party email software with our RE constituents. I have an Excel CSV file with First, Last, and Email but I can't figure out how to import that into RE and additionally, in doing so, to update the email for people who already have existing records. 


I'm new to RE so any help or guidance anyone can offer would be great!


Thanks,

Sam
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Comments

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Welcome to your new position!  Whew, starting off with a challenging task. I'll start with some questions.


    When you say people who have existing records do you mean constituent records or email records? Big difference in what you need to do.

    I'm guessing you have quite a number of emails from the 3rd party and that it is not Email Finder run through BB. Does the csv file by any chance have constituent IDs?

    Do you have ImportOMatic or Importacular software? Not that they would make it easy but could help with the process.


    Some of the issues to deal with:

    if csv has John Smith with email -
    • how do you know which of the 3 John Smith records in your database it should be linked to? 
    • if you're bringing in new constituent records, how do you know if that "John Smith" is the one already in your db?
    • if you're bringing in new email for a constituent whose name matches who already has an email on their record, will you keep both as active? Which is primary? 
    Not trying to scare you off but this is a huge, delicate project for even an experienced db manager. When I came back into RE at the beginning of the year, I found through research that email, phone, address finders are not always accurate. 


    How familiar are you with excel? Importing?  If you haven't done any importing in RE, I'd take a training course before attempting this.

    Okay, now that you're thinking about your issues, if I were in your shoes and had to work with what I had I would export out all my relevant RE records to excel/csv. Being sure to include constituent ID field, first and last name and existing emails (type/primary/inactive).  I would add a field to every record in my csv identify it as coming from the 3rd party email software.  Then I would combine those two files.  Look for duplicates in emails - delete 3rd party line as it's already in db. Look for duplicates of names and determine if you want to update record with those emails. If so copy the ID to the 3rd party line of each record you will want to update. You'll need to familiarize yourself with the import process and create a separate file for records you want to add emails to.

    If you are bringing in new names with emails - creating new records - mark those lines of the 3rd party accordingly.  I'd split out those new records as you'll need to do a separate import to create new records.


    Oh, I wish there were an easy way but without having constituent ids in your 3rd party data it's going to take a lot of work.  Maybe someone else will have a great solution. I sure hope there's another way to do this.  Don't give up - facing challenges helps to build character. I'm preaching to myself as I work on a daunting task. :)
  • Anna Zimmerman
    Anna Zimmerman
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Hey Sam! Congrats on your new position. I second what JoAnn has already said. There won't be an easy way to import unless you have constituent IDs. Alternately, if you have their zip, or city/state, that may at least narrow down your list. 


    When I've had to do a similar project in the past (I was putting email addresses in from a zoom event we did), I had about 50 names that I was working with. For that, I did a constituent query for specific records. Zoom attendance only gives you what the attendee provides, so sometimes it wasn't much to go off of. But for criteria, I searched for the names using specific record - one of: , then kept track of names I'd need to add that weren't in our DB. Once I had my list complete, I made the output parameters their first/last name, and their email address. I sorted it to match the list given me, or in alpha order, then compared/contrasted email addresses we already had from the Zoom list, and added any email addresses to the constituent record that we didn't have. After that, I could simply import the new constituent records using the import tool. There are a lot of good knowledgebase articles on how to do that. 


    Hope this helps! Good luck! 
  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    You can import using a tool like Importacular without having a Constituent ID, Constituent Import ID or SSN, but as Joanne said, you won't have much to match on with the information that you listed.  You can set Importacular to match on First and Last Names and when it matches more than one, it will ask you to decide, so that may work for what you're trying to do.


    The other advantage to importing with Importacular is that it will allow you to avoid adding the email address if a matching email address is already found in Raiser's Edge.

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